King usurps Zynga as top dog on Facebook

London firm King has overtaken social gaming giant Zynga as the number one developer on Facebook.

Zynga has long-dominated the Facebook charts for years, with hugely popular titles including FarmVille and Mafia Wars ensuring it kept its status as top dog in the social gaming stakes.

King however has now overthrown the struggling company, and according to stats from AppData has racked up an estimated 150 million monthly average users, compared to Zynga’s 147 million.

It also comes as little surprise that Candy Crush Saga is by far the most player game on Facebook, with over 44 million MAUs. In fact, daily average users are said to be as high as 15 million, up from just five million in November last year.

TripAdvisor is the second most used app on a monthly basis, but Zynga’s FarmVille 2 has over ten million less users than King’s flagship title at 33 million.

Over the last year King has become one of the world’s biggest studios on the back of the success for Candy Crush Saga.

The casual games outfit took on Facebook in February 2011, making 26 of its games playable through the social network.

Last year the company also began making its move on mobile, and hasn’t looked back since, generating 80 monthly average users in February for its titles. The London company is now also thought to be gearing up for an initial public offering on the US stock exchange.

By comparison, Zynga has struggled greatly over the 18 months since its IPO, partly down to the decline in the social gaming market and its spree of acquisitions including Draw Something developer OMGPOP, which it bought for $210 million last year and recently closed down.

The company is in the midst of wide-ranging restructuring, putting an increased focus on real-money gaming and mobile titles, and has laid off around 20 per cent of its staff worldwide.

The firm also recently brought in Xbox boss Don Mattrick as its new CEO, replacing Mark Pincus at the helm, in what the board hopes will help turn Zynga on the right track and back into one of the world’s leading game companies.